Novel Excerpt from Osman by Ayfer Tunç
Translated by Hardy Griffin
Translator’s Note
Ayfer Tunç is one of the most exciting voices in Turkish letters today because she is blazing a whole new style that might be described as ‘multiperspectivism,’ in which first-person narratives are stitched together to accentuate specifically Turkish themes and aspects of the culture. This is on display in Tunç’s only novel currently available in English, The Highly Unreliable Account of the History of a Madhouse. In the excerpt from Osman below, a journalist interviews many witnesses to a terrible event and as the patchwork of these perspectives develops, the titular character, Osman, comes chillingly alive on the page. In order to give the reader a taste of this approach in action, the openings of the first four chapters have been excerpted below (in other words, this excerpt is not continuous but rather four excerpted pieces with breaks between them). This novel is particularly important today because it fits well with Turkey’s current runaway inflation and the rise of a national sense of depression combined with a devil-may-care attitude.
The valet at Ella Jazz Club, Kâmil Dere
“People can’t forget…”
How many valets work at the club?
There’s usually two of us… but I was alone that night… the other one went home early.
You saw the accident.
I saw it… it happened right in front of me. I yelled at Mr. Osman that the truck was coming… he didn’t hear. Or else he heard and he wanted it to hit… I don’t know anymore. He was already like a ghost.
How was he like a ghost?
What do I know, he was walking weird… as if he wasn’t touching the ground.
Was he drunk?
I don’t know… maybe.
Why would he have wanted the truck to hit him?
He was very unhappy.
Unhappy? You’re saying he killed himself?
Oh now, there’s nothing I know for sure… but I wouldn’t be surprised if he killed himself… that’s what I’m saying.
So you knew Mr. Osman well.
Not really… I just saw him coming and going from the club.
How do you know he was unhappy?
People’s faces say it all… don’t they?
I don’t know. Do they?
I think they do.
What did his face say?
Now how should I put this… he was always lookin’ into the distance, like he could see the end of things… or his own end. What do I know, it was weird. My older brother would stare off into space just like him, maybe that’s where I saw the resemblance. From that. He later hanged himself.
Who?
My brother.
Your older brother hanged himself?
Yes, he did. In the coal cellar. In the coal cellar of his own home.
I’m sorry for your loss. How old was he?
Twenty-six.
So young. Why did he do it?
We don’t know.
When did this happen?
It will be five years ago this August. But I can still see him hanging there. You can’t forget it…
Mertol Özdemir, eyewitness to the accident
“His melancholy always caught my attention.”
Did you know the deceased?
We knew each other by sight. I would see him going in and out of the hotel. They told me he was a pianist at Club Ella… I didn’t know that before.
What job did you think he had?
Well, I never thought about it. I don’t know why I didn’t think about it… he did interest me, though.
What interested you about him?
He didn’t look like an ordinary person, he had a different air about him. He dressed quite elegantly, for instance. How he walked and even the way he stood there seemed cool. He was a classy man, I mean… not beaten down.
I understand you believe he committed suicide, is that right?
I think he did. I can’t be sure, of course, but what I saw him do… the way the accident happened made me think it was suicide.
What state of mind did he appear to be in, to make you feel this?
In spite of his cool, I thought he was a man in pain. I don’t know anything about it, but I think you can see a person’s inner state reflected on their face. There was a pain in his features.
So that night, you saw Mr. Osman before the accident…
No, no… I’m not talking about the night of the accident. His melancholy always caught my attention. In fact, it occurred to me that we might meet and talk. I wondered if an interesting story might emerge…
The head waiter for Ella Jazz Club, Fethi Karış
“I can’t figure out if there’s a curse on that piano or what.”
What were you doing when the accident happened?
I was in the kitchen, we were cleaning up. I found out about the accident five or ten minutes after it happened. Our kitchen is on the other side of the building, that’s probably why I didn’t hear it. But it was quite loud… that’s what they said.
How did you find out?
Furkan told me… our busboy.
Did he see the accident?
No, Erkan saw it.
Who’s Erkan?
He’s the host. Erkan was puking his guts up, Furkan said. I went right to the hotel side, to see if anyone was ill. We’re not connected to the hotel, actually, but our boss is friends with the owner. Why didn’t you check out the hotel, he’d say… he’d say something like that. I saw Erkan collapsed in a chair, his face looked like calcified lime on the inside of a pot, he was shaking like crazy. What happened, I asked. He couldn’t speak… tongue tied. That’s when the children told me a truck had hit someone. I went out, uhhhhh… blood was everywhere… the man was lying in the middle of the road…
What did you do?
Nothing. The police had already come. So, I went home.
You knew the deceased, didn’t you?
How could I not? Mr. Osman… our pianist. But I didn’t understand it was him at first. I thought it was just someone on the street. Someone from the hotel said that’s your pianist. I looked again, it was in fact him. I felt really sick. When it’s someone you know, it makes you sick to your stomach.
How long had you known Mr. Osman?
Not long, actually. He started at our club five, six months earlier. Before that Şener was on piano, he died of pancreatic cancer. Before Şener was İrfan, he died of a heart attack. Mr. Osman was the third. İrfan died while performing… I was the first to notice. I saw his head fell on the piano, no one realized. I pointed it out to the others on stage. When one of them nudged him, he rolled onto the floor. We called an ambulance but he was long gone. He’d already been dead an hour. I can’t figure out if there’s a curse on that piano or what. Whoever plays it ends up dead.
What time was the accident?
Honestly, I didn’t look at my watch, but it must have been after three. Usually, we’d finish around two-thirty. People would leave anyway. No one stuck around after two, but packing things up, waiting for Mr. Argun to split the tips… it’d be three by the time we got out of there. Only Ms. Gaye wouldn’t wait for her share of the take… The second the set ended, her high heels were out of there.
Who’s Ms. Gaye?
The singer. For Ella Jazz Club.
Why didn’t she wait? Was she going to another performance?
No… She only sings here. But she doesn’t want to touch the tips.
Why? Did it upset her, handling the tips?
I guess.
Was Mr. Osman drunk that night?
Absolutely not. Normally, he drinks a lot. ‘Drank,’ in fact. It’s still hard for me to say he’s passed on. Every night he’d drink one of those third of a liter bottles of rakı. Then he’d keep going at home, like the others. They all drink so much. But that night he just had one glass of rakı.
Do the musicians drink during the set?
Of course they drink… Fate has run over these guys. Don’t be fooled because they go on stage. All of their lives are a wreck. They soak it up like sponges. Drink themselves right into oblivion.
Why?
It’s an expensive place, that’s why. If you drink here, you spend everything you make. Some places will give you the occasional drink, no problem… but Mr. Argun cuts it from your take in an instant, no exceptions. He notes it if you drink water. He only covers Ms. Gaye’s drinks, and she can really put them away… six or seven shots of Jack.
Why does Mr. Argun pay for her drinks?
You know.
‘You know’? Are they lovers?
Not officially. But everyone knows.
They hide… Why do they hide it?
Because Mr. Argun’s married. His wife supposedly doesn’t know. Is that even possible? She definitely knows. She knows but she acts like she doesn’t...
The Hotel Maison receptionist, Erkan Bağcı
“It was horrible, the man had no face.”
How long have you worked at this hotel?
It’s been eight months.
Always at night?
I have to. I go to school during the day.
Where do you study?
Yildiz Technical University. To be an English teacher.
Isn’t it hard going to school during the day and working at night?
Is it ever. It’s difficult… but I have to work…
Do you live with your family?
No, my family is in Bartin. I live with two friends in Dereboyu…
So when do you sleep? You don’t go to school without sleeping?
I sometimes drop off in my chair. There’s not much going on at the hotel after two a.m. But it’s like a fox sleeps, of course… with one eye open. Our hotel’s small but the clientele are capricious. Something happens every night.
Like what?
All sorts of things. Mostly we have to deal with drunk guests. Some guy comes home at dawn four sheets to the wind and can’t find his keys. You give him a new one, now he can’t find his room. You have to hold onto his arm as you walk him right to his door… or at three in the morning, somebody calls and says they can’t turn on their TV or connect to the internet. All right, it happens, people wake up and can’t get back to sleep or they need the internet right at that moment. We take care of it. But sometimes at four a.m. somebody wants to send their clothes off to the dry cleaners. I’ve got a meeting tomorrow, the guy says. You can’t say, this just occurred to you now? Our guests aren’t just random people passing through, some of them stay here two or three times a month. We have to keep them happy. What they insist on most is getting some food. You tell them the kitchen’s closed but they don’t understand.
Isn’t there 24-hour room service?
No. Our room service ends at two.
So what do you do? You tell them the kitchen’s closed, there’s nothing we can do.
Actually, we’re not supposed to say that. The manager has instructed us that whatever the guest wants, they get. We order it online. They want ridiculous things. The night of the accident, there was this woman, for example, who had to have dental floss. We’ll give you a toothbrush, we said. No, she absolutely had to have floss. I’d understand if it was something vital but come on… So you don’t floss one night, what’s going to happen. We sent someone to the on-call pharmacy, but when they brought it up to her, she wanted the tea tree flavored stuff.
There’s tea tree flavored dental floss?
Yes. Ridiculous requests like that. It never ends. Foreign guests aren’t so capricious, in fact. It’s Turkish citizens who are the problem.
Why?
Because they’re rich. I have money, you’re going to serve me. That’s the way our rich people think. Sometimes there are fine rich people, of course. Because our hotel is a boutique one, in general we have good guests, mostly foreigners.
What were you doing during the accident?
I was studying, exams have started. I heard a noise. Didn’t do anything at first. It’s Istanbul after all, there’s always noise. But following that I heard a scream.
Who screamed?
Kamil, the valet. I went out to see what was going on. I saw a lake of blood, Mr. Osman’s body on the ground. It was horrible… He didn’t have a face, nothing you could recognize.
How did you know it was Mr. Osman?
From his coat. I recognized it. He’d passed by me not two minutes earlier. I told him his coat was really nice. It was nice once, he said, now it’s old. We laughed. Then I said good morning and he went out. I got up to get myself a coffee, I was sleepy, that’s when I heard the noise. When I went outside: disaster. My first dead person. And I know the man…
***